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Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night,
Swithin waited, hoping to get into the house without
a “scene,” but when at last he alighted
the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him
with an admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed
to detect irony. Rozsi, pale and tremulous, with
a half-scared look, gave him her hand, and, quickly
withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister. When
they had gone up to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.
His spirits had risen remarkably. “Tell
the landlord to get us supper,” he said; “we’ll
crack a bottle to our luck.” He hurried
on the landlord’s preparations. The window
of the, room faced a wood, so near that he could almost
touch the trees. The scent from the pines blew
in on him. He turned away from that scented
darkness, and began to draw the corks of winebottles.
The sound seemed to conjure up Boleskey. He
came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly of stables;
soon after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but
Rozsi did not come.

“Where is your sister?” Swithin said.
Rozsi, it seemed, was tired. “It will
do her good to eat,” said Swithin. And
Boleskey, murmuring, “She must drink to our
country,” went out to summon her, Margit followed
him, while Swithin cut up a chicken. They came
back without her. She had “a megrim of
the spirit.”

Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet,
sinking sensation in his chest; and tapped on Rozsi’s
door. In a minute, she peeped forth, with her
hair loose, and wondering eyes.

“Rozsi,” he stammered, “what makes
you afraid of me, now?”

She stared at him, but did not answer.

“Why won’t you come?”

Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out
to him her bare arm. Swithin pressed his face
to it. With a shiver, she whispered above him,
“I will come,” and gently shut the door.

Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused
a minute outside the sitting-room to regain his self-control.

The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied
him.

“She is coming,” he said. And very
soon she did come, her thick hair roughly twisted
in a plait.

Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for
he was really hungry. Boleskey too was silent,
plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb; Margit alone chattered.

“You will come to our Father-town? We
shall have things to show you. Rozsi, what things
we will show him!” Rozsi, with a little appealing
movement of her hands, repeated, “What things
we will show you!” She seemed suddenly to find
her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths full, and
eyes bright as squirrels’, they chattered reminiscences
of the “dear Father-town,” of “dear
friends,” of the “dear home.”